


Adam Parrish: Sad Sack

by Ohsoverysensible



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Slow Burn, Swearing, adorableness, because ronan, bit of grossness, low grade sickness, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-05
Updated: 2016-02-05
Packaged: 2018-05-18 02:11:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5894101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohsoverysensible/pseuds/Ohsoverysensible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Adam gets plagued by something nasty and it isn't Ronan Lynch.</p><p>Or, well, it might be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adam Parrish: Sad Sack

Adam jolted awake to the sound of a car horn being blared, long and loud and angry, just outside St. Agnes. His heart was hammering, his sandy hair a complete and utter mess around his face, and he groaned as the horn kept honking in shorter bursts.

The sound reverberated around his head in a way he didn't quite like, and for a brief moment he felt a bit dizzy with it. Even with only one ear actually working.

Adam ran a hand over his face and groaned again as he slid the blankets off his legs, feeling warm and cold at the same time. There was a little sheen of sweat over his brow, a little heat in his cheeks, and as he sat on the edge of his bed he looked across at his messy desk. It was covered in books and notes and haphazardly tossed around pencils. How long had he been up? And how many days had he done this now? What with the jobs, Glendower, the Barns,  _and_ class, Adam was running ragged.

A strange wave of heat washed over him as he stood up, and for a moment Adam put his hand to his forehead. It felt warm, steamy, but he dragged a hand through his hair and splashed water on his face in the bathroom.

A loud knocking came from his door. "Parrish! Get the lead out!" No time for a shower, then. Ronan Lynch wasn't known for his patience.

Throwing on a shirt and hap-hazardly tugging on jeans, Adam almost stumbled to the door. He pulled it aside, and there was the sharp-faced Ronan, leaning on the door frame in a snazzy leather jacket looking like the epitome of a bad boy. It almost made Adam smirk, and he would have tried to if his face didn't feel exhausted. "You look like shit," Ronan said as his hello. "Come on, man, hurry it up."

"What are we doing?" Adam asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes as Ronan moved by him into the small apartment.

"Cabeswater," Ronan reminded him. The memory felt fuzzy in Adam's head; walking through the woods, making the plan to come back tomorrow, Gansey being his usual excitable self while Adam trudged through the forest. "I drew the short straw so you're riding with me. Let's go."

"I have a car," Adam grumbled, catching his pale reflection in the small mirror on the wall. He wasn't usually that pale, or this tired, or this dizzy. His head even ached now, and it felt heavy.

"A shit car," Ronan put in, sitting easily, indifferently, on the edge of Adam's bed. The sight of Ronan here, perfectly comfortable, was one that Adam was still trying to get used to. They didn't hate each other anymore, not that  _hate_ was ever really the word. They'd  _nothing'd_ one another, until Ronan let Adam through his thick skin for brief moments, and Adam realized there'd never really been anything about Ronan that turned him off. In fact, a lot of Adam's fondest memories of his Aglionby friendships focused on the fun he had with Ronan.

With Gansey, it was thoughtful, intellectual, and studious activities that took up their time. With Ronan, it was freedom. It was donuts in the parking lot, loud music, and not a care in the world. 

"Stop daydreaming, Parrish, let's  _go_!" Ronan grunted, making Adam's sleepy eyes take in the sight of him once more. His black tattoo snuck lazily about his neck, and Adam sighed as he reached for his thin jacket and slid his shoes on. God, he was a mess, and he was dressed like it too, but Ronan clapped a hand on Adam's back and practically shoved him into the hall, slamming the door. Adam locked up fast and followed slowly as Ronan blew down the stairs.

Ronan opened the car door and slammed it hard after throwing himself in. Adam walked around the nose of the massive black beast and struggled to climb up into the seat. The instant Ronan started the car, his shit music started to blast, and Adam cringed as he buckled up. "Could we please have silence for a change?" he drawled. He could hear it, his accent, pooling out of him in his sleepy state. But he didn't care. He felt too tired and headachy to care about anything right now.

Ronan, the shit that he was, reached forward and turned the music up. Then he wheeled the car around and sped off down the road, making Adam's stomach lurch uncomfortably. Adam snapped as Ronan drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and facing certain death he lunged forward and slapped the music off.

"Hey, what the fuck!" Ronan shouted, glowering at Adam as he leaned his head back in his seat. "You don't fuck with the music, Parrish. Not in my car. When we're in your shitsmobile you can do what you want, but this is my--"

"Ronan," Adam groaned, making Ronan shut his mouth with uncharacteristic speed. "Please just shut up."

Adam could feel Ronan's glare without even looking, so he just closed his eyes to Ronan's reckless driving, which wasn't making him feel so free and easy this morning. "Well damn, don't need to be such a dick about it."

Adam didn't even have the energy to flip Ronan off.

"What's wrong with you, anyway?" Ronan asked.

"Nothing, your music just blows," Adam grumbled, but he could hear how weak his voice was. He still felt hot, still felt dizzy, and the bumpy road and Ronan's speed was making his stomach turn. He hadn't eaten anything he realized, but the thought of food wasn't very appealing. In fact, Adam felt a bit car sick. But he didn't get car sick.

"Hey fuck you, man, I'm being serious," Ronan said, and there was maybe, perhaps, possibly just a touch of real concern there, but it was laced with his usual hardness that Adam was not in the mood for. "You're paler than Noah."

Adam didn't answer. Eyes closed he felt a tiny bit better, but the jostling of the car wasn't doing him any favours. In fact it was causing a lot of problems. Then Ronan took a sharp turn and everything in Adam went to shit.

"Parrish?"

Adam's eyes opened and he reached out a hand to grab the dash. "Pull over," he almost whispered.

"What?" Ronan snapped.

"Pull over!" Adam bellowed, and Ronan almost squealed his wheels pulling off to the shoulder.

The BMW had just barely ground to a halt when Adam threw the door open and almost fell to the dirt on the road. He stumbled away, just a bit, and he knew he wasn't going to make it to the bushes. Bending his knees, sweat covering his skin, Adam braced his hands on his legs and retched onto the road. He vaguely heard the sound of another car door slamming, the echo of shoes on gravel, a sharp intake of breath.

"Jesus fuck," Ronan said as Adam's empty stomach emptied further. He could hear Ronan step forward, then back, then forward again as Adam shook and wiped tears from his eyes. Why did it always make his eyes water? Cars whizzed past and Adam waited it out, testing the waters, analyzing how his stomach felt now. His head still ached, his body trembled, and he sighed and spat into the distance as he slowly, glacially, stood back up.

He groaned.

"Damn, Adam, what the hell," Ronan breathed as Adam stepped away from the small mess he'd made. Without anything to eat there wasn't much to pour out of him, but he wished he felt better. When he was little, sometimes he'd make himself sick just so that the nauseous feeling would pass. Right now he still felt like death.

"Sorry," Adam mumbled. "I'm good."

"Bullshit," Ronan said, and when Adam turned around he saw the unhidden shock in Ronan's face. It was odd to see his sharp, usually narrowed eyes in such an open expression. "What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," Adam said, shaking his head which was a mistake. "I just...I've had a couple late nights I guess."

"And that does  _that_?" Ronan wondered, giving a disgusted gesture to Adam's entire form. 

Adam shook his head lightly. "I just...I just probably need something to eat." Even just the thought of putting food in his mouth made him nearly gag again, and Ronan grunted.

"Yeah, fuck it," Ronan decided, and Adam watched him yank his cell phone from his pocket. He half expected Ronan to throw the device at him, but he dialled and pushed the thing to his ear as he marched forward and took Adam's arm. "Come here," Ronan directed, the grip on his arm not nearly as strong as Adam expected. He let Ronan guide him to the passenger seat and lean him against the edge of it.

"What are you doing?" Adam wondered, but the sharp demand he could usually get into his tone wasn't there.

Ronan just held up one finger, telling Adam both to wait and to shut up. "Hey," Ronan said to the voice on the other end of his phone. "We got a situation....Yeah, we were, but Adam fucking tossed his cookies on the side of the road."

Adam groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. Gansey. He could even  _hear_ his outraged cry on the other end of the call.

"Yeah so I think that's off...He's fine. Well not fine. Looks like a pile of shit but yeah...No I got it...I said I got it, man," Ronan said, turning to the side a bit. Adam noticed him lower his voice, noticed his shoulders tense. "Fucking relax and do your thing, alright?" He hung up as forcefully as he could on his fancy phone, then turned back to Adam. "Boring conversation anyway. Get in."

"Where are we going?" Adam mumbled as Ronan seemed to debate shoving him into the car.

"Back," Ronan said, letting Adam hopelessly clamber back into the BMW. "You're gonna be useless today."

Adam wasn't denying that, and he didn't exactly hate the idea of going home. In fact, a weird and uncomfortable nervousness that had been tensing his body this morning finally relaxed at the thought of going back to bed. But Gansey. And Blue. And Cabeswater. 

Ronan slammed his car door and turned the BMW slowly around. He could have squealed the tires again and spun the car out as he tore off down the road, but he didn't. "If you hurl in my car, you're a dead man, by the way."

Adam almost smiled, but he was too embarrassed, too disgusted with himself, and too tired to even try. Pathetic. He should have known he was sick, or something like it, before he even got into Ronan's car. Last night he'd felt a bit off, but he'd put it down to being tired not ill. But this morning? Nausea, headache, sweating? Adam wasn't stupid, and he was mortified by both his apparent denial _and_ his display in front of Ronan. Why he cared he wasn't exactly sure, because so what? It was just Ronan. Maybe it was just the embarrassment of being ill at all. Of being vulnerable. In front of the  _least_ vulnerable person alive.

Or so Ronan liked to make them all think.

So Adam just stared out the window as Ronan drove with a very obviously cautious hand. It threw Adam off, the care Ronan took in driving slow and steady, in getting back into Henrietta without hardly a bump in the road. Adam wasn't used to Ronan this way, precise and slow and actually stopping at stop signs?

Adam finally turned away from the window just to frown at Ronan's sharp profile, but then he realized where they were heading. "Where are we going?" Adam groaned.

"Monmouth," said Ronan as he pulled towards the parking lot.

Adam sighed. "No, Ronan, take me home," he whined.

"Relax, sad sack," said Ronan. "I'm not throwing you at your shitty little room and letting you barf your guts out alone."

A wash of sweat swept over Adam once more, but this time he wasn't sure the nausea was due to whatever sickness he had. "What?"

Ronan stopped the car with that same strange caution, and looked at Adam like _he_ was being the unreasonable one. "There's jack shit all to do at your place," Ronan complained. 

"So leave me alone there?" Adam suggested with a raised brow.

"You think I'm that much of an asshole I'm just gonna let you kick the bucket by yourself?" Ronan asked, getting out of the car and slamming the door.

Adam sighed. "I'm not dying," he breathed to the empty car, but his stomach and his head weren't exactly too sure about that. He hated being sick. He hated being useless. He hated that Ronan opened the car door for him and gestured for him to get out. "I'm not dying," Adam said again, doing his best to glare.

Ronan scoffed. "Have you seen yourself?"

Adam flipped him off very pathetically.

"Gansey would lecture the hell out of me if I left you," Ronan finally sighed, suggesting that Gansey had already started before Ronan had hung up on him. "So get out."

Adam took in a slow, steadying breath, but it just made his stomach hurt and his head feel faint. He supposed he could lay on Gansey's bed, as absolutely awkward as that would feel. Adam didn't like taking up space unless it was his. It was probably why he hunched and kept his hands in his pockets a lot.

"What, need a hand, Cinderella?" Ronan asked, cocking a brow again as Adam hesitated.

"Shut up, no," Adam grumbled. He sounded like a five-year-old. Holding the little handle on the door, and the little handle on the roof, Adam managed to throw himself out of the car in an attempt to look strong. Ronan slammed the door behind him, and Adam regretted the jump. He stumbled, wobbled, and placed his hand on Ronan's BMW.

"Whoa, you gonna faint on me now?" Ronan asked, and through slightly veiled eyes Adam felt Ronan step close. Like he really thought Adam would give him the satisfaction of passing out. Like he was getting ready to catch him.

Adam flailed a hand out to wherever Ronan was and shoved him back. "Stop. Just...Forget it, just go inside." He stumbled off towards the door and felt Ronan close behind him, prepared to catch Adam but pretending not to be. Adam rounded on him. "Would you stop hovering?" he snapped.

Ronan raised his hands in mock defence. "Relax. Don't get your panties in a twist at me cause you feel like shit."

"Yeah well you're not helping," Adam glowered.

Ronan snapped his fingers sarcastically. "Ah hell, my one goal in life is to help those around me. Guess I better kill myself now."

Adam did _not_ like Ronan even joking about that. "Shitbag," Adam grumbled, turning back around and heading into Monmouth. He was surprised the door was unlocked, but then also absolutely unsurprised given that Ronan was probably the last to leave. Adam hesitated a moment before making his way up. The stairs seemed more like a mountain to Adam than just a few short steps.

"I'm not carrying you," Ronan grumbled from behind him, and Adam huffed through his nose and yanked himself up the stairs by the unsafe railing. Monmouth felt cold when Adam finally reached the main apartment, and he heard Ronan shut the door and chuck off his jacket into a corner. Gansey's bed was shockingly made, his desk somewhat organized, and Adam had a feeling he knew why. He had a feeling Blue had come up this morning before they headed out, and that meant tidying. That meant Gansey in a flurry.

Adam's chest tightened a bit, but then it released just as fast. Gansey and Blue...he honestly didn't really care anymore. It was obvious to him if it wasn't obvious to them, and it burned him every once in a while when he caught them staring at one another...

Adam turned around a bit and caught his own peeping tom in the act. Ronan blinked his blue eyes. "What?" Adam asked.

"You seriously look white-washed, man," Ronan said, nearly scowling at that fact. He pointed towards his room. "Go sleep it off or something."

Adam followed Ronan's finger, blinked, frowned, then looked back at him with a slight wobble. "Where are you pointing?"

Ronan shook his outstretched arm for emphasis. "To a bed, idiot. Go."

"Not yours," Adam said. It was both a question and a statement. His stomach was roiling again.

"Yes, mine, Jesus you're slow today," Ronan said, and Adam saw the tension shift in his body that said Ronan wanted to push Adam. But he didn't. He wouldn't. Adam opened his mouth to explain, argue, snap, but Ronan sighed. "Gansey actually  _uses_ his sometimes, alright? You're not fucking his space up.  _Go._ "

The argument was there. Adam had it ready and waiting on his tongue, but there was a combination of things that stopped him. First, it was still throwing him off how Ronan was behaving almost nicely. Ronan had done a lot of nice things for Adam the past little while (lowering his rent, getting him lotion for his hands, driving him around) but it was still strange. Strange, and yet obvious, but Adam wasn't quite ready to accept Ronan's...Ronan's  _crush_ just yet.

Second, Adam was far too exhausted and miserable to really find the energy to debate this. He wanted to sleep. He needed to, and the thought of laying down made his angry stomach feel better. The thought of getting into some kind of fight with Ronan made the exact opposite occur.

And third, Adam was disturbingly, oddly, unopposed to taking Ronan's bed over Gansey's. It might have been because Gansey wasn't here, and it seemed like crossing a line they'd never really had. It could have also been because Gansey's bed looked too nice to mess up. But Adam strangely felt that sleeping in Gansey's bed was a bit too  _intimate_ for their friendship. And for some reason, he didn't feel that way when it came to Ronan's space.

It was probably because Ronan was right, and he barely slept in his bed here anyway. Adam wasn't even sure he could call it "Ronan's" when it lay empty most nights.

"Fine," Adam finally agreed, all these thoughts going through his head in mere seconds.

"Good," said Ronan, squaring his shoulders as Adam walked off. He felt a little awkward when Ronan didn't follow him, because Ronan's room was usually off limits, but after the smallest hesitation he pushed the door open and was hit with a wave of  _Ronan_.

Chainsaw's cage was open, the bird mysteriously absent, and there were piles upon piles of random things everywhere. Ronan's room was more like a warehouse than the entirety of Monmouth, full of random artifacts that could have either been junk or treasures. His bed, unmade, seemed the epitome of "I don't give a shit", but the pillows (two of them in mismatched cases) looked fluffy and expensive. Adam wasn't exactly sure why Ronan, wealthy well-off Ronan Lynch,  _liked_ looking poor. At least sometimes. The $900 dollar tattoo on his back and his massive black BMW suggested otherwise, but even his designer clothes got ratty, and there was trash in his car almost always.

"Make yourself at home or whatever," Ronan said, walking past his bedroom door to Monmouth's makeshift kitchen/bathroom. Adam watched him go before braving one step into the room. For all the mess, Adam was surprised it didn't reek as well.

He stood at the foot of Ronan's bed, wobbly, tired, drained, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't just crawl across the mattress and slump down on the disorganized sheets while Ronan traipsed about in the distance. While the rest of Monmouth was empty except for the two of them. They hadn't been ripping at each other's throats for a while now, but it was still Ronan. Ronan who bit at any hand that tried to feed him. Ronan who took joy in doing the exact thing someone told him not to.

Ronan who was trying, in his own way, to take care of Adam. 

He put a knee on the mattress.

"Lay down already!" Ronan barked, appearing in the doorway and making Adam jump.

"Alright!" Adam yelled, but the breath he used to do just that made his head swim again. With Ronan watching like his beady-eyed raven, Adam crawled into the bed, sat down, then laid down stiff as a board.

"For fuck's sake, Parrish," Ronan grumbled, inconvenienced as he marched into his room and yanked the blankets out from Adam's legs. In the next motion he was throwing them over him, and Adam's eyes went wide. Ronan flicked him in the forehead. "Go to sleep and stop apologizing for breathing."

Adam frowned. "I didn't say anything." But Ronan had already left, slamming the door and grumbling to himself as Adam lay alone in his bed.

***

Adam woke up in a dazed panic, blinking his eyes, trying to remember when he ever had a stereo that big. When he ever had  _two_ of them, or a bird cage. Or such comfortable pillows. But it flooded back to him as he sat up too fast and felt the world tilt around him. Ronan's room. 

_Ronan!_

Adam put a hand over his face and sighed between his fingers. What time was it? The sun was trying to blare in through Ronan's thick curtains, and Adam tried to remember ever pulling them shut. Were Gansey and Blue back? Was Ronan still around?

Adam took inventory of how his body was feeling, still a little tired and sluggish, but that could be due to his empty stomach. His lips were cracked and parched, his mouth tasted disgusting, and he cringed at the memory of why exactly that was. He ran a hand through his sandy hair, and then Ronan's door opened.

"Hey sad sack," Ronan smirked. "How goes it?"

Adam frowned and narrowed his eyes. "Been better."

"Been worse," Ronan shrugged. Adam couldn't deny that, and he watched as Ronan took a bit of time to form his next sentence. "Need anything?"

This was so strange. Adam just stared at Ronan's shaved head in disbelief, as if this couldn't possibly be the friend he'd known. As if maybe it was Gansey wearing a Ronan suit. "Um," Adam mumbled. "Water? A toothbrush?"

"The first one I got," Ronan said. "Second one, not a chance in hell. But Gansey has mouthwash the pretentious fuck. Help yourself." Ronan swung himself out of the doorway, and Adam experiemented with moving his arms to get the blankets off. He felt warm, and he panicked briefly at the idea that he might have got sweat all over Ronan's bed, but it didn't smell. Well it did, but it was an almost pleasant scent. Ronan's scent.

Adam shut his eyes to that thought and managed to stand up without wanting to die. Ronan reappeared with a bottle of water and he handed it out to Adam indifferently. "Thanks," Adam mumbled, taking the bottle and opening the cap. He took a slow, cautious sip, then a slightly longer one before stumbling off to the "bathroom." He found Gansey's mouthwash and only felt just a bit guilty when he waterfalled a bit into his mouth. He swished it around, spit into the sink, and somehow felt a dozen times better about his breath and his mouth.

When he came back into Ronan's room there was food on the bed. And Ronan. He pointed menacingly at Adam's face. "If you bitch about me buying you food, I swear to God, Parrish, you're walking home."

Somewhere in Adam he knew he should roll his eyes. Somewhere in his head he knew he should snap back at Ronan, but somewhere else he knew that was what Ronan wanted. So Adam just smirked and walked towards the bed. He sat down with a little groan and investigated what he figured was lunch: deli sandwiches and fries. Perhaps not the best thing to eat when sick, but Adam was pleased to actually feel his stomach rumble. "Thank you," Adam said as Ronan took a massive bite out of his own sandwich.

"No problem," Ronan mumbled around a mouthful of bread and meat and cheese. He leaned back on his bed and brought a knee up, resting his elbow on it and watching (too intently) as Adam nibbled his food.

"So are you gonna have to go out tonight and beat something up to feel normal?" Adam mused as a silence lasted too long.

"Come again?" Ronan asked, raising that brow at Adam again.

"Cause of all this," said Adam, gesturing to the food, to Ronan's bed, to Ronan's care. "It's like your heart grew two sizes today."

"The fuck does that mean?" Ronan scowled.

Adam smirked again despite himself. "The Grinch. You. You're being nice, it's weird."

Ronan gave Adam an absolutely perfect look of  _you're not funny_ , but Adam still smiled. "You want me to throw you back at your shitty ass apartment? You can tuck and roll it out of my car."

"Alright, okay," Adam said, pinching a fry between his fingers before popping it into his mouth. He looked around Ronan's room in favour of watching Ronan eat the last bite of his food like an animal. Adam worried it would just make him snort, because even through the slight headache and bit of nausea that remained, he was feeling lighter. Comfortable.

But his eyes fell on something placed in the corner of the room, set on top of an old wooden box, both as if the item were useless and treasured. Adam knew what it was. That is, he knew  _whose_ it was. "Are those Kavinsky's sunglasses?" Adam asked before he could shut his mouth. He vividly recalled seeing the boy wearing those white frames with those dark lenses, an odd contrast that had always made Kavinsky seem harder to get a mental grip on.

Ronan followed his gaze and kept his face absolutely, perfectly serene. "Yeah," Ronan said, like he didn't know they were there, like it wasn't visible but also hidden specifically by his hands. "Must have dreamt em or something."

Adam nodded vaguely, feeling a stupid heat in his cheeks as he chewed another fry slowly. He couldn't imagine Ronan dreaming them, or at least choosing to take them with him when he awoke. No, Adam had a feeling he knew exactly why Kavinsky's glasses were here. He could envision Ronan swiping them when no one was looking, keeping them in his pocket like another secret he didn't need, then setting them right there to stare at him through the night. 

Ronan looked down when Adam cast him a glance, and as he crumpled up the wrapper from his sandwich, Adam saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. "Can't really give em back to him," Ronan said, but his usually sharp tone was muted.

Adam flinched and watched Ronan do everything in his power to keep his face blank, to keep his eyes off Adam at any cost. Adam just watched this practice and noticed how familiar it actually was to him. Through all of Ronan's snappiness and sass, all his genuinely harsh words, Adam had seen this face on him before. A practiced mask of iron meant to keep it all in or keep it all back. He wondered when Ronan had learned to perfect that, if it had been before or after Niall's death. But then Adam still had trouble imagining Ronan as anything _but_ this person he knew now.

Ronan hadn't talked much about Kavinsky after...after it all. But Adam had felt, so strongly that he'd nearly asked Ronan about it more than once, that it still wasn't sitting well in Ronan's head. And maybe even in his heart.

Ronan's eyes finally flicked up to Adam's and he froze. "What?" Ronan demanded sharply. 

The words formed, and Adam opened his mouth. "You can do better than him, you know." It was an absolute shit thing to say about someone who was dead, but Adam was a fairly firm believer that assholes didn't become instant saints when they stopped breathing. It was one of the reasons why he never wanted to hear much about Noah's life before it ended, he was too afraid to find out his ghost friend was just as awful as the majority of Aglionby boys were.

Ronan looked at him with that blank expression, but his eyes didn't even twitch. Adam fidgeted madly, however, looking away, looking back, scratching his head, playing with his food. He'd eaten too fast and now his stomach was angry at him.

Finally Ronan shifted into something like a relaxed posture. And he smirked a bit. "You assume I was _doing_ anything with him at all."

Now Adam raised a brow.

" _What?_ " Ronan spat.

Adam just shook his head a bit. "Whatever, man, deny what you want."

"Fuck you, Parrish."

Adam laughed. But then felt the repercussion of that. He put a hand on his stomach and furrowed his brows. "I think maybe fries were a bad idea," he grumbled.

"You gonna barf?" Ronan asked, and Adam cringed at even the word. Ronan was bracing to leap off the bed.

But Adam struggled through and shook his head. "I think I just forgot," he almost whispered.

"Forgot?" Ronan asked.

"Yeah," said Adam, but then he looked up at Ronan with a sheepish half-smile. "Can I lay down again?"

Ronan got up, but he didn't rush, nor did he roll his eyes. He just got up like it was normal for Adam to ask for Ronan's bed, and Adam propped the pillows up a bit more before he lay back down in a half up half down position. It took a lot of pressure off his foggy head, and definitely soothed his stomach.

"Better?" Ronan asked. He was standing at the side of his bed, looking down at Adam with one hand in his pocket.

"Yeah," Adam sighed. He brought his hands up over his face. "I'm sorry," he groaned.

"Shut up with that," said Ronan. "And here, move." He swatted Adam's leg, the touch somehow reverberating through the rest of his body, and Adam moved over as best he could. And Ronan sat beside him. Tattooed, tall, pointy Ronan sat beside Adam as he lay there in misery.

"I am a sad sack," Adam sighed again. "I hate feeling sick."

"No one likes it," Ronan said as if Adam were an idiot. "But being stubborn about it won't help."

Adam smirked. "You should say that to yourself in the mirror every morning."

"I'll hit you harder."

Adam smirked wider. "I thought it had passed," he admitted. "I guess I pushed myself too far with the food."

"You said you forgot," Ronan mused, lifting his legs onto the bed and crossing his ankles at the end of it. He leaned against the back wall just a bit higher up than Adam. "Forgot what?"

"That I felt like this," Adam said. "I was distracted." For some reason this felt like a dangerous admittance, but that was Adam's life. His every day revolved around distractions.

"You were distracted and managed to not feel like a pile of shit?" Ronan asked, turning his head to look at Adam as he lay there weakly. "Your head can actually do that?"

"You do that all the time, Ronan," Adam said.

Ronan shrugged and it shook the bed a bit. "Yeah. Doesn't mean it fucking works that well."

Adam frowned a moment. "Well it's all I got," he explained, draping a hand across his eyes as he rambled on. "My whole life is based on distractions. Distracting myself from the truth of everything or from the  _maybes_ and  _what ifs_. Like...what if I lose my scholarship or my job. What if I'm not good enough to really make it. What if I ruined my mother's life by pressing charges on my dad. What if I don't get a full ride from a University. On and on like that, so I have to find distractions. I have to distract myself from the bad so I can try...try  _hard_...to focus on the good."

It was dead silent except for Ronan's slow inhale. "That's heavy," he said, but his voice was soft, not mocking but not conversational. It was pitying, but not in a way Adam hated. Not in the way he saw Gansey look at his ratty clothes sometimes. Not in the way Blue had stared at him after he moved out of his place half-deaf. Ronan never looked at Adam like he was lesser, like he was a sad sack. No matter what he said. Ronan never really, truly treated Adam like a pity case. He said what he thought, he didn't lie and hide behind Adam's own pride. He said what he thought, then that was that. No long glances, no pursed lips, no cut off words. Just "get your shit together".

Adam was frowning. His mini-monologue was making him feel exposed, stupid, vulnerable, and even if he liked Ronan's blunt attitudes sometimes he wasn't sure he should have shed his skin this much. But Ronan knew what distractions were. He was the king of them, what with his loud music, his crazy driving, and his angry heartbeat.

Which Adam could have sworn he felt.

"You wanna be distracted?" Ronan asked quietly.

Adam very nearly smirked as he pulled his hand away from his face. "Almost constantly. I just don't show it off as much as you do."

Ronan was looking down at him with that blank face, but there was still that hint of emotion in his eyes. Adam never really noticed how blue they really were, like a cloudless sky. That kind of innocent colour didn't seem to match the angles of his face. "You still feel like shit?" Ronan asked.

"Yeah," Adam said, swallowing down a dry throat.

"Thinking about how you feel like shit?"

He pursed his lips a bit. "Yeah," Adam admitted, defeated.

"Want a distraction?" asked Ronan, and Adam turned his head a bit to look at his friend. Ronan wore the most open, terrified, sincere expression Adam had ever seen in their entire friendship. Ronan bent his head close, paused as Adam's breath caught in his throat, then pressed his thin lips to Adam's.

There were a multitude of things that went through Adam's head. _Holy shit, what do I do, should I stop him, his lips are soft, are his eyes closed, should I close mine, holy shit, what the fuck..._

But Ronan's lips  _were_ soft. And his eyes  _were_ closed. And Adam thought he should pull back, thought he should stop, but he didn't. _Couldn't_ might have even been the better word. Didn't  _want_ to was more accurate.

In the back of his head Adam realized this was his first kiss. And it was with a boy. With  _Ronan Lynch_. But there were too many other things to focus on besides that, like how after one strangely stiff kissed they each learned how to move their lips against each other. How Ronan's mouth was gentler than Adam thought it would be. That Adam had actually  _wondered_ what Ronan's mouth would feel like in the past. One kiss melted into another, with little moments of ragged breath in between, and Adam closed his eyes.

Adam broke away when his mind finally lost a bit of the shock, but his eyes were still veiled. "The fuck," he breathed, but he wasn't really angry. He wasn't really  _anything_ but curious and embarrassingly aroused. Kisses would do that, he told himself, from anybody. But he already felt like that was a lie.

"Don't overthink it," Ronan purred, eyes still shut, and he leaned back into Adam's mouth without any resistance. Adam's eyes closed again instantly, and he gave an embarrassing near-grunt from the back of his throat when Ronan put his hand on Adam's cheek, his thumb running over Adam's jaw. He let Ronan lead, wondering vaguely if he'd done this before, somehow knowing that he must have, because it felt practiced. It felt expert, at least in comparison to Adam's fumbling lips.

And it felt  _glorious_. It felt exactly worthy of all the times Adam had wondered what a kiss would be like, a real one. Not the pecks on the lips he'd given little girls as a little boy, not the awkward kisses a distant aunt always gave him, but a real kiss. From someone who cared about him. Long ago--was it really long ago?--Adam had wanted this with Blue. He'd wanted it  _bad_. But now he realized he'd just wanted that connection, a physical link to someone who maybe understood him. Who maybe could make him feel something more than numbness, anger, or sadness.

Kissing Ronan wasn't that same want. It was there, hot and strong in Adam's gut, but it was different. It wasn't just the connection Adam was enjoying. It was the connection with Ronan. With that freedom.

And then Ronan dared let the tip of his tongue brush at Adam's lips, and he overthought it. He panicked and broke off, sitting up, hand on his stomach. "Wait, I feel sick," Adam said in a rush, shutting his eyes tight and bowing his head. He gulped, once, twice, then grimaced. "Not because of you," he told Ronan, who he could feel watching him as Adam almost curled into a ball. "Sorry."

A hand came on his back, just off to the side over his shoulder blade, and Adam froze. "You're fine," Ronan told him, and it was almost soothing if not for Ronan's deadpan tone.

Adam focused on breathing, on clearing the new cloud that had fogged over his mind, and when he opened his eyes Ronan was holding his water bottle out to him. Adam took it slowly, mumbled a thank you, and took a few slow sips. They sat this way for a moment, Adam's mind reeling, his lips damp from Ronan's kiss, and his heart hammering. It wasn't helping his headache or his stomach, but it sure was distracting.

And then the hand was gone. The bed bounced a bit and Adam looked up as Ronan headed for the door. "Wait," Adam said, making Ronan stop in his tracks.

But he whirled angrily. "What?" he demanded. "What, Adam?"

Adam's jaw flapped for a moment as his throat tried to remember how to speak. "You can't just...I mean you...We just..."

"Yeah, hell of a distraction, right?" Ronan said bitterly. "Think on that for a while and I bet you'll feel right as rain. Or have a new reason to be sick." He turned.

"Stop!" Adam snapped, making Ronan pause again. He was almost through the doorway now. "Would you just hold on? Pause for a second, Jesus. You can't just...I mean we can't just leave it like that."

Ronan turned, slowly, dangerously, and looked at Adam like he was already tired of this. Tired of  _him_.

Adam gulped. "Come back here," he said, trying to imagine he had the same vocal power Gansey seemed to have over Ronan. Ronan didn't budge, however, and Adam frowned. "I can't get up, man. Come here," he said sharply, and Ronan glowered before his composure broke and he came back to the bed. He sat on the edge roughly, back to Adam, and waited. Like a chained dog, Adam thought.

He swallowed again and licked his lips. He could taste Ronan there, and it made something deep in his abdomen twitch and tense.

"What?" Ronan demanded, not turning around. "What do you want me to say?" Adam didn't even have a chance to think about it before Ronan was spilling his guts. "Want me to say I like you? That it? Pretty sure you already had an idea about that so you can't be too fucking shocked. I mean I haven't been subtle, I've  _seen_ you see me."

"Stop, would you?" Adam interrupted weakly.

"Why?" spat Ronan, finally turning. His eyes were wide. "So you can let me down easy? Trust me, man, I don't need the talk."

"I don't wanna let you down at all!" Adam argued, and those words seemed to hit Ronan like a punch to the face. All anger left his furrowed brows, and he just stared as Adam felt his heartbeat pick up. "For fuck's sake, Ronan. Not everyone is about to disappoint you."

They sat in silence, looking away, looking back, controlling their breathing. Every time Adam bit his lips he could feel Ronan's mouth again, and it made him have to put his hands in his lap. That was a new feeling, a new reaction to a new situation.

"You're kidding, right?" Ronan finally asked, quiet and uncharacteristically nervous. "I mean you can't actually..."

Adam swallowed. "I knew how you felt, I think?" he explained horribly. "I mean I thought that you maybe...But I really didn't understand why."

"You don't understand why anyone likes you," Ronan half-heartedly jibbed.

"True," Adam agreed pathetically. "But with you it was like...I don't know. A thousand times more flattering and a million times more impossible."

Ronan blinked those blue eyes at him. "Like I'm that high on your list of people to win over."

"You kind of are." 

Ronan blinked. "Well you've done it, so gold star for you," Ronan bit, and Adam felt his lips twitch almost into a smile.

"How long?" Adam wondered. He had a feeling, or at least he had  _his_ feeling of when Ronan started paying particular attention. But he wanted the real answer. Straight from the horses mouth.

Ronan groaned. "You're gonna make me do this whole fucking thing, aren't you," he grumbled, but Adam just waited. Ronan sighed before explaining. "Remember when you first moved out and came over here? Before you fucked off and screwed yourself up with Cabeswater?"

Adam glared. "Yes."

"Then."

That long? Adam inhaled nice and slow and let it out with a few shakes. He was still nauseous, still headachy, but this was more than his sickness now. "Really?" he breathed.

"Why the fuck else would I have kicked the shit out of your dad for you?" Ronan wondered, and it actually made Adam laugh. "Alright, my turn. You. You didn't pull away, so what the fuck?"

Adam opened his mouth, then closed it as realization hit him. That little pause, that momentary hesitance Ronan had given before he closed the final distance between them, had been for Adam to pull away. If he really hadn't wanted that kiss, he'd had plenty of time to yank back and push Ronan off. And he hadn't. He'd just inhaled, waited, and even opened his mouth a bit! He could lie and argue and deny and say he was in shock, but he wasn't. He'd been ready.

Adam realized he'd been ready for a while. 

"I...don't have an answer to that," Adam said all the same, and Ronan sighed and scrubbed a hand over the back of his head. "But I didn't hate it." When Ronan looked back, Adam felt like his heart was two big for his chest. He wasn't sure if this made him gay, but it was somehow the smallest, most minuscule concern in his head. The world was vast,  _his_  world was monstrous in size alone! Having feelings for Ronan Lynch was far down on his list of things to worry over.

"Do you wanna...Do you wanna, I don't know, go out sometime?" Adam cringed.

But Ronan smirked. "That was pathetic."

"That's me," said Adam. They stared at each other for a moment. Then Adam asked, "So do you want to?"

"Yes, you fucking idiot," Ronan said. "That's a stupid question." Adam laughed and looked away, but even with his eyes off Ronan he was still smiling. "What's that face?" Ronan asked. "What are you smiling at?"

"Something stupid," Adam said, raising a brow at Ronan. "So I'm smiling at you I guess."

Ronan slapped his arm. "What are you smiling at, fucker?"

Adam bit his lips into a line as he crafted the words. "It feels nice," he finally said, heat in his cheeks, his pulse in his ears. "It feels nice to feel wanted. To be the one someone actually wanted for a damn change. To be the one somebody chose." Adam broke off. It almost hurt to say that out loud.

Ronan scoffed and leaned forward, and before Adam knew it their lips were together again. This time there was no shock, there was just a melting sensation in Adam's chest and a dizziness behind his closed eyelids. Ronan nipped at his lip before pulling back and pressing their foreheads together. He chuckled, warm breath coating Adam's face. "Lighten up, sad sack," said Ronan, and then he kissed him again.

 


End file.
